For more than a century before the Twenty-Fifth Amendment’s ratification, Members of Congress raised concerns about ambiguities in the Constitution’s Presidential Succession Clause.1 For instance, after President William Henry Harrison’s 1841 death, Senator William Allen of Ohio questioned whether Congress should recognize Vice President John Tyler as the President instead of addressing him as the Acting President.2 Reciting the Succession Clause, Senator Allen argued that recognizing Tyler as President after Harrison’s death would imply that a future President could not reclaim his powers and duties from the Vice President upon recovering from an inability.3 Nonetheless, after debating the issue, the Senate concurred in a joint resolution addressing Tyler as the President.4

Congress again debated presidential inability in the 1880s after President James Garfield’s assassination and in the 1920s after President Woodrow Wilson suffered a stroke.5 Various bills introduced in Congress in the 1920s would have empowered the President’s Cabinet, Vice President, or Supreme Court to participate in evaluating presidential disability.6

Congressional action on presidential inability acquired new urgency after President Dwight Eisenhower suffered a heart attack in 1955.7 Representative Emanuel Celler of New York, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, and Senator Estes Kefauver of Tennessee, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Constitutional Amendments, held hearings in the House and Senate, respectively, on legislation to address presidential inability.8 The hearings explored several issues, including: (1) how, if at all, to define presidential inability; (2) who should initiate the transfer of an incapacitated President’s powers and duties to an Acting President; (3) who should determine presidential inability and its termination; and (4) whether an amendment to the Constitution on the subject was necessary or desirable.9

By early 1958, after President Eisenhower suffered a third illness in office, many Senators had concluded that a constitutional amendment was necessary.10 However, no proposal was considered on the House or Senate floors.

Footnotes

1

U.S. Const. art. II, § 1, cl. 6.

2

Cong. Globe, 27th Cong., 1st Sess., 4–5 (1841).

3

Id. The original Presidential Succession Clause provided, in relevant part, that “[i]n Case of the Removal of the President from Office, or of his Death, Resignation, or Inability to discharge the Powers and Duties of the said Office, the Same shall devolve on the Vice President . . . ” U.S. Const. art. II, § 1, cl. 6 (emphasis added). If Congress acquiesced in Tyler’s succession to the presidency after the President’s death, then the Succession Clause potentially implied that the full presidential office would devolve upon the Vice President in the event of presidential inability.

4

Cong. Globe, 27th Cong., 1st Sess., 4–5 (1841). The joint resolution contained traditional language creating a committee to inform the President that Congress was assembled and able to receive communications from him. The Senate rejected an amendment to the joint resolution that would have addressed Tyler as “the Vice President, on whom, by the death of the late President, the powers and duties of the office of President have devolved.” Id. See also id. at 3–4 (House’s rejection of an amendment offered by Rep. McKeon that would have addressed the President as “Vice-President, now exercising the office of President” ).

5

E.g., 13 Cong. Rec. 191–93 (1881); Defining Article II, Section 1, Clause 5 of the Constitution, Relative to Disability, Removal from Office, Etc., of the President of the United States: Hearings Before the H. Comm. on the Judiciary, 66th Cong. 3–5 (1920).

6

E.g., H.R. 12609, 66th Cong., 2d. Sess. (1920) (Supreme Court); H.J. Res. 297, 66th Cong., 2d. Sess (1920) (Supreme Court when authorized by Congress upon the Cabinet’s recommendation).

7

Presidential Succession and Delegation in Case of Disability, 5 Op. O.L.C. 91, 100–03 (1981) (citations omitted).

8

E.g., The Inability of the President to Discharge the Powers and Duties of His Office: Hearings Before the Subcomm. on Constitutional Amendments of the S. Judiciary Comm., 85th Cong. (1958); Problem of Presidential Inability: Hearings Before the Special Subcomm. on Study of Presidential Inability of the H. Comm. on the Judiciary, 85th Cong. (1957); Problem of Presidential Inability: Hearings Before the Special Subcomm. to Study Presidential Inability of the H. Comm. on the Judiciary, 84th Cong. (1956).

9

See sources cited supra note 116.

10

See The Inability of the President to Discharge the Powers and Duties of His Office: Hearing Before the Subcomm. on Constitutional Amendments of the S. Judiciary Comm., 85th Cong. 1 (1958). See also S.J. Res. 40, 86th Cong. (1958) (proposing a constitutional amendment addressing presidential inability).